


heaven knows (a sinner needs a saint)

by akaparalian



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Allusions to Dex and Nursey's incredibly hot heavenly sex life (but no actual heavenly sex), Alternate Universe - The Good Place (TV) Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 09:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18092192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: “I’m just saying,” Derek says stubbornly, around a mouthful of clam chowder, “there’s no way they’d let us have sex this good if this was the Bad Place.”





	heaven knows (a sinner needs a saint)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fill for Check Please Bingo (finally!), for the square "Setting: The Afterlife"! I only remembered the rule about not swearing in the Good Place after the first draft was done and had to go back and correct for every single swear, so hopefully I didn't miss any, haha. 
> 
> You can find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/akaparalian), [Tumblr](http://floralegia.tumblr.com), and [Dreamwidth](http://akaparalian.dreamwidth.org).
> 
> Title is from 'Hate the Way You Love Me' by John Paul White.

“I’m just saying,” Derek says stubbornly, around a mouthful of clam chowder, “there’s no way they’d let us have sex this good if this was the Bad Place.”

“You’re a moron,” Will snaps back immediately, glaring across the table at him. “And stop forking talking with your mouth full.” He hesitates a moment longer, then adds, once more with feeling, “And you’re a _moron_.”

Derek smirks, knowing by now that by the time Will gets around to just repeating things like _you’re a moron,_ he’s near the end of his rope. Honest-to-God soulmates or not — and he still has his doubts about that — he can’t deny that at this point, he knows Will better than he knows himself. But rather than saying anything else, he obediently closes his mouth to keep chewing.

There’s a beat of silence, and then, as though he can’t help himself, “There’s _no way_ the Good Place would be down with the kind of shirt we get up to, Nurse. I was raised Catholic. Don’t fight me on this.”

“I’ll admit I was raised a godless heathen,” Derek concedes, twirling his soup spoon in his mouth as he says it and pretending to ignore the way Will’s eyes track his tongue and lips wrap around the thing, tamping down on a smirk. “But, come on, this shirt doesn’t really take an expert. Heaven is supposed to be paradise, right?”

Will grumbles lowly, dragging his gaze away from Derek with what appears to be a concerted effort.

“ _Right?_ ” Derek presses.

“I mean, I guess you’re not completely wrong about that,” Will bites out. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“And _if_ heaven is paradise, and the Good Place is, like, more or less heaven,” Derek says, raising his voice to talk right over the end of Will’s statement, “then it should give us what we want. Hence, it gave me you, and your freckles, and your butt,” he concludes triumphantly, waving his spoon at Will in an attempt to encompass all of the many points of evidence he perceives in his favor. 

The tips of Will’s ears go pink, but he doesn’t back down easily. “You can’t sweet-talk your way into winning an argument,” he snaps, but his eyes are way, way softer than his voice is, so Derek thinks maybe he’s lying just a little bit.

“Tell that to my Nobel,” he says breezily, and Will rolls his eyes at that, but then, that had been the point. “Besides. Even if you’re not willing to accept the obvious truth of my ‘this is a literal paradise designed to tend to our every need and keep us happy for all eternity’ argument, you gotta at _least_ admit that you don’t think that having fabulous, kinky sex with me is _torture_ , or I’m gonna get real upset.”

Will’s entire face goes beet red this time, but even better is the shocked, affronted expression — and the way he has to sputter for a solid fifteen seconds before he manages to get anything resembling an actual word out. 

Derek’s maybe a little bit in love with him, but then, like, if they’re soulmates — and, at the very least, the Good Place guys seem pretty convinced — isn’t that kind of the point?

“Of course I don’t think it’s _torture_ ,” Will manages eventually, reaching across the table to grab Derek’s hand and gently squeezing it and managing to look offended that Derek would make him do such a thing all at the same time. “I came like five times last night. I’d like to see you find _anyone_ who would call that torture. And what does that have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Well,” Derek says, in his most reasonable and innocent voice, as he squeezes Will’s hand right back and refuses to let him snatch it away to the other side of the table again, instead lacing their fingers together securely, “if the Good Place is paradise, and the Bad Place is, like, eternal torture and suffering and whatever, then why the hell would they let us get away with making each other —” 

_Feel good_ is what he meant to say, what makes _sense_ to say in the grand scheme of the argument and the larger situation and everything, and also, what he _should_ say, because soulmates or not, they’ve only been here for… well, time’s a little weird, but a couple of months, and as good as things have been, it still definitely feels like he has to handle Dex with care, and _making each other feel good_ , at least, is well within the realm of what’s acceptable, what’s _normal_ for them.

But it’s not quite the truth — or, well, it’s not the _whole_ truth.

So, instead, at the last minute, Derek’s stupid brain betrays him a little, and instead he says, “— making each other happy?”, and he only feels stupid about it for about half a second, because there’s a moment where just a little bit of surprise flickers over Dex’s face, but then that surprise is gone just as quick as it came, and in its place is something unbearably fond.

There’s a beat of silence — well, no, it’s never quite _silent_ in the Good Place, there’s the gentle bustle of foot traffic and people chatting pleasantly from the street, and a soft breeze and birds chirping, but there’s quiet between the two of them, anyway, and it feels so fragile that Derek doesn’t even want to breathe in case he ruins it, and holds his breath.

He _does_ breathe, because he feels like an idiot sitting there holding in a breath waiting for Will to say something, but he must not ruin it, because almost as soon as he lets out the air that had been in his lungs in a great, gusting sigh, Will matches the sound, and then his voice is more tender than he normally lets himself get away with when he says, “I guess I can’t quite argue with that.”

“Yeah?” Derek replies, a dizzy, happy feeling bubbling in his chest, the bowl of clam chowder in front of him long since forgotten. “You mean that?”

“Don’t get cocky,” Will says immediately, but he’s smiling, and he doesn’t even try to pull his hand away, and, anyway, Derek knows how to read between the lines by now, at least a little bit. He just smiles, savoring the moment — and then, knowing that he can’t let them stay in the soft, sweet sappiness for too long or they’ll both get complacent, lets that smile fade slowly into a smirk.

“Aw, Will, baby,” he cooes, “I thought you _liked_ it when I got cocky,” and he immediately has to duck, laughing, as Will swears and throws a balled-up napkin at his head. But, even then, a little voice at the back of Derek’s head can’t help but note that the whole time, Will never lets go of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Nursey's actually won _two_ Nobel prizes; the peace prize (for his work with the arts and community centers in low-income urban communities), and the literature prize (for his, you know, literature). Dex racked up a lot of points for being one of the first out professional hockey players, as well as for being a good dude in his personal life (apparently being both a celebrity and a genuinely good person gets you bonus points vs. being a good person who isn't famous -- yet another possible indicator that the points system is fucked all to hell). But _are_ they really in the Good Place or the Bad Place??? *shrug* Hell if I know.


End file.
